I'm just curious about the stability of your royalty income. This year my royalties alone have increased to a living wage, (not a particularly luxurious living) but a living. This is basically all higher end library work.

I'm wondering how reliable they can be long term. Are there any of you here that have so much content out there that you consistently earn above a certain amount in royalties yearly, or are there ludicrous peaks and depressing troughs?

I'm well aware how unpredictable they can be, and I'm not asking for any figures, but I'm still curious how sustainable they are from your experiences.

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I would like to ask which are the higher end libraries that regularly place content?

2016 hasn't been as good as 2015 to me and I have about four times as many tracks in circulation. Just bad luck I guess... hoping for a better year in 2017.

Edit- I'll add that aside from the odds side of it, I also didn't do the best job of mixing up my avenues. I was hoping to branch out and find some new libraries that were good fits and ended up with several dead ends and time wasted. Onward to the new year.

Yeah, some shows dropped off for me so my royalties were low for the year. It sucks. I have to keep putting more stuff out there and let these new cues get placed in shows that will be broadcast over and over.

I would like to ask which are the higher end libraries that regularly place content?

My experience shows non-ex libs can place content just as well or sometimes better than "higher end" libraries. Just my personal experience. When you think you've got it figured out,,,,,,reality rears it's head and you realize you're just beginning to understand what you thought you knew cold......

High End does not necessarily AUTOMATICALLY equate to large back end royalties.

PS - as to the original question and comments on growth - when your royalties are just starting to grow, it's easy to get 100% growth a year or more. I was averaging 65-80% growth PER QUARTER for several years when I was hitting things hard. Then things flatlined after awhile - now - when growing - growth averages out to be around + 6-8% or so. That is unless they go down. For a while about 6 years ago, BMI dropped to roughly 50-60% of what it was paying out and took years to get back up on it's game - hurt composers pretty bad. Seems healthy and fairly consistent now, but who knows. The elephant is in the room, and I'm waiting for the proverbial shoe to drop.....

On a related note, according to a consortium of publishers I know, ASCAP is paying 38% LESS than what BMI pays for same show, same time, same usage. (Figured out by a group of co-operating publishers with multiple co-writers cross referenced against multiple tunes that were aired on network and cable by aforementioned publishing co's.) That's a rough blow for TV writers on ASCAP. Most publishers in that consortium are trying like crazy to pull their ASCAP writers out of ASCAP.

Forgive my Noobiness if Im off base, but I was referring to a "synchronization license" that would be used for syncing music to picture vs performance rights in the case of of music being played on the radio or digital streaming.

Forgive my Noobiness if Im off base, but I was referring to a "synchronization license" that would be used for syncing music to picture vs performance rights in the case of of music being played on the radio or digital streaming.

I think mechanicals are collected by MCPS in UK. All this confuses me greatly. I personally receive sync fees from the libraries I work with and then additionally I
get payments from time to time directly via MCPS. Not a lot of money directly. The most I've received was enough to pay a months rent. The least has been enough to buy a cuppa tea.

Everybody who has placements on TV shows airing in Europe actually earn mechanical royalties too, not just performance royalties. Apparently, it can be significant money, so I suggest to look into that.

Has anyone in here with a large catalogue had experience with switching from ASCAP to BMI?

I have a large body of work -- many shows, multiple seasons -- and am wondering how difficult it would be to switch all of that from ASCAP to BMI. It would mean migrating/revising hundreds of cue sheets, so I'm not sure how possible it would be. Seems very daunting.

My royalties with ASCAP have been very good (both domestic and international) , but a couple people have mentioned this higher BMI pay out to me so I'm curious if I'm missing out on something.

A couple people told me that BMI pays out higher for cues with Vocals, but not sure if that is also true of cues with nonvocal cues.

I switched from ASCAP to BMI in 2004.... A friend whom I was working with in TV at the time told me they did a better job of tracking the broadcasts and put me in touch with someone from nashville... Up to that time, I was having problems with ASCAP... Ironically because ASCAP had to do spring cleaning when it started to close my account, my revenue started to rise. For a few years I was getting checks from both places during the shift to BMI. Bottom line... I noticed immediately that my revenue went up significantly with BMI and I have been very happy with them since....

Damn I'm such a sucker. I really should've spent less time in film and more time writing for libraries. I'd kill to have residual income like that. To be fair though, I find film work highly rewarding (then again, free $$ is also highly rewarding goof)

Sucks to have to actually work for a living :face palm:

Oh, and to answer your question, highly volatile. My bread and butter is film work though so it really doesn't matter, and it is quite nice to get a completely unplanned check from BMI (which is great btw, a pox on ASCAP).

Do you want me to list them out for you? There's plenty of info on here and other sites. Plus, they've been listen out a bunch of times on THIS here forum. If you use the search function for 5 minutes you're bound to find what you're looking for.